Daring Bakers: Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and MilanCookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

Since I obviously didn’t need to be eating that many cookies, I decided to make just one of the recipes. It was a tough call: milanos are my favorite, but I’ve also been dying to try making homemade marshmallows. Since this was for Daring Bakers and I wanted to push myself to try something new, the marshmallows ultimately won out.

These may not be the most beautiful cookies in the world, but oh my goodness, they were incredible. I was planning to bring them in to work, but that didn’t happen. They were just too good to share. The marshmallow process was a LOT less intimidating than I thought it would be. I did have a little trouble with them falling at first, but that was remedied when I stuck them in the fridge for 5 minutes before putting them onto the cookie base.

Oh, I also need to talk about the cookie base. They were awesome, and I’ll be using the recipe again. They’re the perfect shortbread- not too sweet- with a nice crispy crunch and a soft center. Perfect alone (especially the chocolate version – notice how there’s only one of those left in the photo below?), but when you put the marshmallow on top they soak up the moisture and transform into a soft, cakey base. Amazing.

I made two versions of these cookies- vanilla marshmallow with chocolate cookie, an lime marshmallow with vanilla cookie. To make the chocolate cookies, I just added 1/4 cup of cocoa powder in with the dry ingredients. To make the lime marshmallows, I made a lime powder by dehydrating some lime peel and running it through a spice grinder. (See, look at that- I learned something from Daring Cooks!)

Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies

3 cups (375grams/13.23oz) all purpose flour

1/2 cup (112.5grams/3.97oz) white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter

3 eggs, whisked together

Homemade marshmallows, recipe follows

Chocolate glaze, recipe follows

Blend the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add the butter and mix until the dough looks sandy. Add the eggs and mix to combine.

Form the dough into a disk, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
When ready to bake, grease a cookie sheet or line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 375.

Roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Use a 1biscuit cutter to cut out small rounds of dough. Transfer to the prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes or until light golden brown. Let cool to room temperature.

Spoon marshmallow onto the top of each cookie. Let set at room temperature for 2 hours.

One at a time, gently drop the marshmallow-topped cookies into the hot chocolate glaze. Lift out with a fork and let excess chocolate drip back into the bowl. Let set at room temperature until the coating is firm, about 1 to 2 hours.

Yield approx 4 dozen cookies.

Homemade marshmallows:

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup light corn syrup

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon powdered gelatin

2 tablespoons cold water

2 egg whites , room temperature

1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a saucepan, combine the water, corn syrup, and sugar. Heat to 235 degrees on a candy thermometer.

Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water and let dissolve. Remove the syrup from the heat, add the gelatin, and mix.

Whip the whites until soft peaks form and pour the syrup into the whites. Add the vanilla and continue whipping until stiff. Refrigerate until ready to use- this will help the marshmallow firm up.

Chocolate glaze:

12 ounces semisweet chocolate

2 ounces clarified butter

Melt the 2 ingredients together in the top of a double boiler or a bowl set over simmering water.

****

I’m going to do a little experiment: A lot of people have asked me if I eat “this way” all the time. Now you’ll be able to see for yourself – I’ve started a new blog where I plan to document everything that I eat. I can’t promise you that it will be pretty, and I’m not sure how long it will last, but you will get to see what else I eat – including some recipes that I don’t deem worthy of posting here for some reason or another. You’ll also get a sneak peek at some recipes before they make it to this blog. Why am I doing this? Honestly, I’ve put on about 5 pounds and I don’t like them! I want them gone before I go on a cruise in September, and I know that my main problem is snacking too much. I hope that posting everything I eat will help keep me accountable, and will really make me think about whether I really want more cookies. I hope to see you there!

Thanks for the amazing recipe. Many feels that chocolate is not good for health. But some are good for health like, unsweetened chocolate, bitter-sweet chocolate, raw chocolate bar. One can add grinded cacao beans to smoothie preparations, sweet dishes, tea or beverages, yoghurts, granolas, ice-cream or sweet preparations. One can even make beverage by blending the powdered cacao with hot water or with milk substitutes like hemp milk, multigrain milk, or coconut milk. Also chocolate sauce can be made.